The use of various devices which facilitate communications and/or which themselves utilize communications has become nearly ubiquitous. For example, personal computers (PCs), personal digital assistants (PDAs), electronic book readers, cellular telephones, personal media players, etc. widely in use today often utilize network connectivity, such as to provide user communication links, upload/download of content, operations and control communication, etc. Accordingly, various network infrastructure has been deployed to provide networks, such as local area networks (LANs), metropolitan area networks (MANs), wide area networks (WANs), and the Internet, facilitating the foregoing communications.
The foregoing network infrastructure often implement various forms of communication links for facilitating the desired communications. For example, various edge devices (e.g., access points (APs), base stations (BSs), node Bs, etc.) may provide wireless links for connecting terminal devices (e.g., PCs, PDAs, electronic book readers, cellular telephones, personal media players, etc.) to a network to facilitate communications. Backhaul links may, for example, be provided between such edge devices and other network nodes of the network infrastructure (e.g., routers, switches, concentrators, gateways, etc.) to provide broadband communication to the core or backbone network. Such backhaul links may, for example, be used to provide trunking with respect to the data flows of all active terminal devices in communication with a corresponding access point providing a backhaul link to network resources.
The foregoing backhaul links may comprise wireless (e.g., radio frequency (RF)) or wireline (e.g., copper cable or fiber optic) links. Irrespective of the particular communication media utilized with respect to the backhaul links, these links are typically provided as high reliability links in order to facilitate predictable communications meeting the requisite quality of service (QoS) obligations for the terminal devices or other communications endpoints. Such high reliability links provide a limited network resource (e.g., bandwidth limited, channel limited, capacity limited, etc.). For example, wireless backhaul links are often provided using licensed spectrum, such that a channel or channels within the licensed spectrum is reserved for providing one or more backhaul links. The use of such licensed spectrum is advantageous because interferers (i.e., systems unassociated with the network or backhaul link operating within the licensed spectrum) may be substantially eliminated due to the restrictions of the licensing. However, the licensed spectrum comprises a specific block of spectrum, the size of which presents limitations with respect to the channels, bandwidth, and capacity that may be accommodated.
It is not uncommon for the demand for communications by various network nodes (e.g., the aforementioned terminal devices) to, at least temporarily, exceed the capabilities of a backhaul link used in providing a network link. Accordingly, various schemes for avoiding network congestion have been tried. For example, network congestion avoidance according to such schemes may be implemented by dropping data packets as network traffic reaches or nears network resource congestion. As can be readily appreciated, it is generally not desirable to drop data packets as such behavior may result in failed communication links (e.g., where a terminal device detects a sufficient level of dropped packets to conclude the link in unreliable or otherwise unacceptable), poor quality of service (e.g., jitter, missing data, etc.), inefficient operation (e.g., repeated data retransmission attempts, repeated attempts to reestablish the link, etc.), and the like.